Why did I assume Deep Descent doesn't appear if you turn on ironman options? Just because it hadn't showed before lvl 41..?
Well it threw me from 41 to 47 by the time I lacked both good offenses and resistances. Ridiculous struggle for surviving from 47 to 51.

Then level 51. It was the compact labyrinth level. Had awake AMHD and other shit I had to constantly Portal away from (or use my only TO charges). It also had Godly Insights and very nice artifact Short Sword. Artifacts were just painfully rare considering this my first ironman attempt. Only two generated.

Well anyways, I managed to escape the labyrinth level. Took a deep breath when I stepped on lvl 52. Maybe I can work things out with this new detection stuff. Detected traps and mapped. Shit, its a cavernous level. Oh well.. Some minor gold dragons few steps west. Pounded them down and then a sickening roar, rPois ring in my backpack. Apparently that deep breath I took did not deliver much oxygen into my brains. So YASD it was.

Pretty classic poison breath lesson but for me it was the most fun game I've played so far. Ironman is my kind of shit and I'm not gonna give up until I get one!

How come you weren't wearing the =rPois instead of the =DEX? The only reason I am not wearing =rPois if I found one at that depth is because I have a good =Damage and =Speed.

Good question that is already answered above. Plain stupidity. Knew perfectly well what could happen.

You could also ask why I did not detect monsters as soon as I arrived. One Detect Evil and I could've continued the struggle but no.. daddy wants to fight some minor gold dragons.. Big basilisk was waaaaay beyond my league, rPois or not, so that was 100% gtfo situation. After that dDescent thing I was just escaping and burning consumables. Sheer luck I did not die earlier.

As this was my first ironman, you can probably agree I wasn't that lucky? No? At least now I know not to try un id'd scrolls

There are plenty of monsters starting from DL 45 that can instakill a priest with only detect evil, which was just as likely at level 45 as 51. It wasn't the scroll that killed you; it would was walking around with a swap ring equipped.

I'm incredibly dubious about the avoiding killing uniques strategy. The marginal value of a guaranteed {good} or {excellent} object actually goes down the deeper you are. Look at it this way - how many excellent items do you find on the floor or from drops from pathetic monsters (orcs et al.) on DL50 (or 70 or 90 or whatever)? It's quite a lot, in my experience.

Meanwhile, even a {good} object can be great early on. {good} launchers or even ammo are a godsend for just about anyone, early on. A {good} light weapon on a fighter-type is better than anything you're liable to find up to about DL40, depending on your speed. Even {good} armor is better than you might think, since early game is the only time you can't really control when you're in melee very well. A {good} heavy weapon is amazing for Priests, and even Mages (mana conservation is, again, most important early on). Decently often you'll even get an excellent item, and Smeagol and Wormy are guaranteed to give you one.

There's also the matter of the Phial, which has a fairly low chance of appearing on normal drops, but a much higher chance of appearing on a good or excellent drop. I would recommend clearing out the {good}-dropping uniques first, until you get the Phial, and only then go for Wormy and Smeagol. They're pretty annoying (and with Wormy, deadly) to fight super early anyway.

Obviously, you don't want to fight any unique you can't kill without using valuable supplies (!CCW, last couple ?Phase, last couple bits of good ammo) or can't kill at all.

Killing uniques early can be a fun challenge, has a decent reward, and makes the trek to DL30-40 easier. Killing them late gets you a moderate increase in object quality at a point when that is much more easily achieved by going down a couple levels.

There's just not a lot of need even to stay at dl 30, uniques or otherwise. You will meet them again soon, or others like them. With the exception of DROP_GREAT uniques, your odds of something really useful aren't all that much greater than from what you find on the floor, and consumables are likely to be more precious than just a modest chance at a good item. Vaults are a much better prospect than uniques.

Most uniques give a very good shot at an artifact when killed deep. For this reason I usually avoid fighting uniques early. In my randart games, I´ve gotten many a golden nugget for the endgame from orc bosses that way.

That being said, ironman is a different story. A large amount of unkilled uniques means that they are going to pop up again and again and, even if relatively harmless, are bound to increase the danger level of already dangerous dungeon levels. High monster density is something I dont want to have in ironman games and escorted uniques are a sure way to cause it.

One thing that I do different is avoiding killing uniques until dungeon level 30. This seems to increase the chance of a decent to really good drop before the more difficult levels

This advice paid off almost the first time I tried it.

I'm on my 3rd attempt at the moment and I passed on Nar several times.
Killed him on lvl 32 and got an artifact light crossbow with +18 dmg and +2 shooting speed. I'm outta identifys so I don't know if it has any resists in it as well. But looks like its gonna serve me a long time.

Dragged Wormtongue deeper too but his treasure was disappointing.

2nd attempt I knowingly did a suicide raid on a greater vault (lvl 33). Lured a dracolich out without TO (coz I did not have it). Never got the grasp on those 8 level feeling items. Other vault guardians made me teleport out over and over again and I finally landed near the dreaded dracolich.

Suicide dive indeed. Pretty rare to be able to take a serious vault at dl33 in any case. With that bow, you can avoid vaults for a while with little loss.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sphara

2nd attempt I knowingly did a suicide raid on a greater vault (lvl 33). Lured a dracolich out without TO (coz I did not have it). Never got the grasp on those 8 level feeling items. Other vault guardians made me teleport out over and over again and I finally landed near the dreaded dracolich.